Porn on the fourth of July: Fiona Banner rewrites the art of war ~ Adrian Searle

Published in The Guardian,
October 2015

“THE BASTARD WORD”, reads a neon sign that fills a whole wall. My life is filled with bastard words, and so is Fiona Banner’s Scroll Down And Keep Scrolling, at Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery. If her neon sign addresses her conflict with words, it also embodies her difficulties with neon. The glass lettering is stressed and wonky and has scorched the paper template on the wall behind it. It hurts just to look; I know how the words feel.

Banner’s work - now the subject of a major survey exhibition, Scroll Down And Keep Scrolling at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham - is full of teases like this, that make you aware of the links and gaps in your perception of the world.

Fiona Banner mashes up typefaces including Avant Garde and Courier to create a new font ~ Eliza Williams

Published in Creative Review,
September 2015

Banner has created ‘Font’ to accompany two new exhibitions of her work, at Frith Street Gallery in London and Ikon in Birmingham. The Ikon show, which opens on October 10, is the first major UK survey of Banner’s art, featuring works going back over 25 years.